I get that a lot lately. Yes, the 800lb beige gorilla in the room has managed to somehow lose 30 lbs. Giving up nearly everything you love to eat apparently has that effect. When I was younger the only incentive to stay fit involved getting girls. But sometimes even then it just wasn’t enough (aka, boy those Twinkies and that 3 liter bottle of Coke look real good, but I better not if I want to gggaaaammmffff-glugglugglug). Oh well, so much for the diet or the date.

Now it’s very different. After 50 + years of being asked to do the impossible—the regulation of blood sugar for someone with a sweet tooth, nay, a sweet TUSK—my pancreas has flown the white flag of surrender. If it could speak, it would be handing me my ass on a platter about now, which I couldn’t then eat because of all of the associated sugar. The Doc said that I was ‘borderline’ and needed to take daily doses of a wonderful little drug called Metformin, or as I have renamed it, ‘Hello Cramps!’

You see, with the aid of medication, I have been able to cheat destiny many times. Survival has become my very own version of Star Trek’s ‘Kobiashi-Maru’ test. Thanks to drugs like Crestor and Hyzaar, I have, like Captain Kirk, successfully changed the parameters of cause and effect, allowing me to attain an age even my father never reached. Patting myself on the back for attaining the blood pressure and cholesterol of thin people whilst engaging in my very own Food Channel version of "Dancing with Mr. D" as the Stones called it, has now come back to bite me in the ass.

Metformin is supposed to help the pancreas generate insulin, which it does rather effectively. But it does so at a cost. I take it with dinner so as to "lessen its effects on the stomach" as the directions state. Yeah, well, notsomuch. About halfway though Dancing With the Has-beens, as I talk to my wife "Gee hon, I think they got a real good bunch of HOLYSHIT-OH-MY-GOD THAT HURTS...pleaseletmediepleaseletmedie!"

Not wanting to endure the pain of CHILDBIRTH every evening for THE REST OF MY FUCKING LIFE, I have succumbed to what my Wife calls Healthy Eating Habits. I call it The Long Tasteless Goodbye. As I sit there at dinner trying to be upbeat about my dinner salad I rephrase the words to an old favorite Meatloaf song, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, as I sing to myself:

"...and now I’m prayin’ for the end of time,
so hurry-up man arrive.
For if I have to eat another salad again I don’t think that I can really survive.
I won’t forget my promise or forget my vow,
but GOD ONLY KNOWS WHAT I COULD EAT RIGHT NOW.
So I'm prayin’ for the end of time is all that I can do-hoo-hoo,
prayin’ for the end of time so I can have some damn real food.

It was long ago and it was far away
and tasted so much better than it does today.
Oh it was long ago and it was far away
and tasted so much better than it does today..."

Shit, I can’t eat Meatloaf either.

Now that you all feel very sad for me, and dammit you should, let me say now there is a bright side to this friggin foodless fiasco. First off, it’s been a long time since I was this size. One day, as I walked across the showroom at work, my pants—ones I have had an intensely close relationship with for many years—had to my absolute horror suddenly decided the floor was where they’d rather be! It was like my ass wasn’t good enough anymore, I didn’t quite know why at the time, studying my belt and the pants closer for issues. It wasn’t till then that I realized I had in fact lost width. When I got home and ran to the bathroom and stepped on the digital scale that heretofore despised me, I had lost 30 lbs!

Well hi-de-fucking-ho there fellas. To paraphrase Sarah Palin, I can see my feet from my house!

The problem now is that I need all new clothes. Because of the recession, I can ill afford such luxuries as clothes, so I hereby state my intentions to petition President Obama for a "Too Big to Fall" pants stimulus bailout.

As I write this I am at a weight I haven’t seen in probably 20 years, and while I miss my sugar, I find that it’s the carbs I miss the most. Just what the FUCK am I supposed to do with sauce, eh? Make believe I got pasta? Drink it like soup? What? I also found that the makers of Aspartame should be arrested for war crimes. I would love to water board them myself. Soylent Yellow. Aspartame is jet fuel. If you must diet, think Stevia. Oh, and looking for a diet soda that won’t make you plotz? Try Dr. Pepper 10. Not 0 calories, but not 300 either. 10 calories, they actually add sugar, just not a shit load.

Can I keep it up? I hope so, and my wife does too. Only time will tell, but I have to say I would really rather die like my grandpa did...calmly in his sleep at a ripe old age, not screaming like the passengers in the bus he was driving at the time.